Your Chamber, Your Resource: Grow, Advocate, Market, Learn

What does the Chamber do? When a group of us tried to pare the answer down to a reasonable size, eliminate detail, and find the kernel at the core of our work we came up with four words: advocate, market, grow and learn.

The Chamber advocates for our members with our elected representatives, with local, state and national governments, and with planning boards and sewer commissions. We help businesses and organizations market their services and products to each other and to the world. The Chamber’s website and membership directory reach tens of thousands of potential clients and customers every year. Chamber members utilize the services of the Chamber to help grow their organizations. They meet other entrepreneurs and service providers at networking events and create opportunities to do business with each other. And through workshops, webinars and one-on-one business counseling they learn to do all of these activities better.

One of the most important ways the Chamber can advocate for our community in 2010 is to encourage everyone to participate in the Census. You’ll be hearing more about the Census over the next few months and materials will begin showing up in your mailbox soon. We will be asking you to let your employees know about the Census and the importance of being counted. The funding for many federal programs is tied to population statistics and without an accurate count our county could lose needed dollars.

The Chamber is partnering with the Census to help get this message out and we have received several thousand pedometers with the slogan “The Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce Wants YOU to be Counted U.S. Census 2010.” We’ll be distributing these at events in January and February. It’s a great way to get healthy by counting your steps and to help our county continue to have a healthy population count!